As part of The Circle Way’s year end fundraising campaign, we hosted an online fundraiser in December that was “an evening of listening to circle stories that help us imagine a different way”.

We began with our circle centre on our Zoom screens, and a start-point from Richard Wagamese:

"In the dark depths of long winter nights, spirits slumber, too, and allow their stories to be told - these are the storytelling moons. Elders and storytellers who have been given tales to carry speak softly, reverentially, and the people hear them. The people do not merely listen - they hear. To hear is to have a spiritual, mental, emotional or physical reaction to the words. Sometimes, at very special times, you have all four reactions and are changed forever. Share stories, fill cold nights with the warmth of your connections, your relationships; hear each other and be made more. That is the power of storytelling." ~ Richard Wagamese, Embers

This beautiful circle guidelines image, created by Willemijn Lambert, helped to ground us in being well together during the evening:

The flow of the evening was based on an integration of The Circle Way and a simplified adaptation of the Collective Story Harvest Process.

In the Collective Story Harvest Process, we are invited to listen for particular theme or themes in the stories. A theme is like a lens to look at the story through, like the side of a prism, and each lens gives us the ability to focus our collective learning and ‘catch the wisdom’ in the stories. Often we can hear inside and beneath the stories to lift up these learnings. The theme we invited for our listening was “What did you hear in the stories about how circle practice helped to imagine a different way?”

We heard two circle stories, and are very grateful to our storyteller Stephanie Papik, as well as Alex Birnie, Debbie Dorfan, Finn O’Keefe, Sue Harris and Troy Van Heer from the Australian Cerebral Palsy Support Network who shared their story via a previously recorded video.

After listening to the two circle stories, we moved into some small circle groups to share our insights from the listening theme: What are we learning from these stories about how circle practice helped to imagine a different way? 

When we returned from the small circles, we invited some harvesting for our collective learning as well as to share some ‘reflections in reciprocity’ with the storytellers. Here is an excerpt of some the insights shared in the harvesting:

Enjoy scrolling through the evening’s visuals and harvest from the listening theme and check-out here.

The evening fundraiser raised $1,608! Donations to The Circle Way non-profit help to support free circle resources and materials, grants for individuals to attend circle trainings, and the design and development of new initiatives and projects grounded in circle that promote racial, gender, disability, ethnic, economic and environmental justice. There is still time contribute to our end-of year fundraising campaign to help us meet our $25,000 goal.

Thank you to everyone who joined us in December for The Circle Way’s Evening Fundraiser, and to all who were with us in spirit.

"Share stories, fill cold nights with the warmth of your connections, your relationships; hear each other and be made more. That is the power of storytelling." ~ Richard Wagamese, Embers